‘One more lap! One more lap!

’:
An oral history of Mario
Andretti’s historic Indy 500 win
50 years ago
Bob Kravitz May 23, 2019

By 1969, Mario Andretti was becoming a star in motorsports. He had proven he could drive any kind of
car in any kind of race on any kind of circuit. Stock cars, sprint cars, Formula One cars, you name it, he
drove them hard and often drove them to victory.

In 1965, he became the youngest national champion in IndyCar history, then repeated as series
champion the next season by winning eight of 15 events before finishing second in points in 1967 and
’68.

The only thing missing from his growing and increasingly impressive résumé was the Indianapolis 500,
The Greatest Spectacle in Racing, and while most race cognoscenti figured it was just a matter of time
for the young driver, Andretti had run into very bad luck his first four tries. It started hopefully enough
during his first try in 1965, when he finished third and was named the race’s rookie of the year.

But in 1966, he earned the pole by being more than 2 mph faster than anybody else in the field, only to
have the engine drop a cylinder on a restart. He finished 18th. In 1967, he again won the pole but a
slipping clutch put him six laps behind and ultimately, his car lost a wheel, and he finished 30th. The
bottom dropped out in 1968 when he blew an engine on the first lap and finished 33rd.

There was no Andretti Curse, not the way there would be from 1970 until the end of his Indy 500 career
in 1993, but those first couple of experiences in Indianapolis were frustrating, a sign of things to come at
the historic track.

Now it was 1969, a time when open-wheel racing truly mattered in this country and even casual fans
could name the circuit’s stars – A.J. Foyt, Bobby Unser, Dan Gurney, Lloyd Ruby and others. Andretti was
a growing name within racing circles, showing he could drive any kind of car on any kind of circuit –
drivers weren’t as specialized in those days – but without the Indy 500 victory in four attempts, Andretti
was not yet the racing icon he would eventually become.

This is an oral history of Andretti’s one-and-only Indianapolis 500 victory, although you could do an
entirely different oral history on the 1981 race, which Bobby Unser won.

“Yeah, by cheating,” Andretti said. “By passing 14 cars under a yellow.”

“He (Andretti) passed some cars during a caution, too,” Unser said. “I may have passed more cars than
he did (under the caution), but maybe I was trying harder.’’

Andretti, now 79, wears the 1981 Indy 500 ring, which he was initially given after a protest that was
ultimately overturned in Unser’s favor. And yes, so does Unser.

But that’s another story. This is the story of the one Andretti really won, on a day when he had no
reason to think he would win, during a month when so many things went wrong, only to go perfectly
right.

Andretti: We went in with the Lotus. We were loaded for bear. That baby looked like a winner. You look
at all the practice stats from the first few weeks and we were quick every practice. Every practice.

Jim McGee, Andretti’s crew chief: Mario was excited about the Lotus, but we (McGee and chief
mechanic Clint Brawner) were very skeptical. We did several tests with that car, and we came up with a
list of about 200 things that needed to be changed. I went to England for a month and a half to oversee
the whole thing. Mario’s car was fast but we had questions about it. A lot of questions.

Brawner from his 1975 memoir: It was a terrible car.

Unser, third-place finisher in the 1969 Indianapolis 500: Mario fell in love with the Lotus. That was the
Formula One concept he was living with. It wasn’t anything else. He fell in love with the name, Colin
Chapman (the car builder), Lotus … c’mon. They were fast, mind you, but it was gonna crash. It was
definitely gonna crash.

Donald Davidson, Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian: The Lotus was very fragile. Very light, built
for speed, but fragile. Mario came here in ’69 and he was seen as a likely front-runner. From the time he
showed up in the summer of 1964, he was very impressive. He was definitely a superstar in the making.

McGee: Mario was a great driver, but he was wild. He was so determined and technically, he paid
attention to everything everybody was doing. People used to say, ‘Send Mario his Christmas card in July
because you don’t know if he’s going to make it to December.’

Andretti: They knew I was fast but I could kill myself really easy. They tried to cool me down and I
needed that. The message they gave me that as fast as I could go without killing myself was good
enough for them. That’s something I never forgot.

Unser: Guys like Little Al (Unser), Parnelli (Jones), Mario, they were born going fast. They were freakin’
naturals. They had it made in a shade. They got up in the morning and they could go fast. They didn’t
have to train or work hard. But those early days, Mario was crazy. I mean, bad. He spun me out in
Trenton one time and I was going to go over and bop him. He was spinning everybody out. But you know
what calms a man down a whole bunch? It’s sprint cars. Very few of these (current) drivers come from
sprint cars but it helped us, and Mario, the same way. He got better, more courteous, not hitting so
many guys. But believe me, there were guys who wanted to pinch his head off in those early days.

Andretti’s team was owned by Andy Granatelli of STP fame. The businessman/showman had run cars in
Indianapolis from 1946-54 and then returned in 1961. He had run into nothing but bad luck at the
perpetually fickle Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his high-tech cars forever bowing out due to mechanical
difficulties. Granatelli, who wrote a book, “They Call Me Mr. 500,’’ wanted nothing more than to win this
single race. It was his life’s purpose.

Vince Granatelli, Andy’s son: What did winning the Masters mean to Tiger Woods, OK? You can’t
express that. My dad had been running Indy since 1946. He ran every kind of car you can run. You name
it, he ran it. You go every single year, you’re competitive, and then you’re waiting for something bad to
happen. One thing or another, every year, put him out. But he loved Indy. He kept going to Indy until his
health became an issue (Granatelli died in 2013).

McGee: Let me set you straight on Granatelli: Mario made a deal with him to buy the team that year
and we knew Andy and we (McGee and Brawner) said, ‘Well, that ain’t gonna work. We don’t want to
work for Granatelli.’ He said, ‘Well, you won’t have to.’ We told Mario, the deal was, Andy was not
allowed in our garage, he couldn’t say anything about the race team, he couldn’t be in our pits during
the race, nothing. He could be in all the photos and ads but nothing to do with the car or the team. He
and his brother, (Vince), we called them the Katzenjammer Kids. They were good promoters, great
promoters, but they weren’t real racers.

Davidson: Andy was a publicity-seeking master. He was one of the greatest showmen of all time. Not
everybody liked him, but the general public did. He’d play the poor kid with a humble beginning who
could play the sympathy card. When his cars malfunctioned, it was ‘poor, poor Andy.’

Unser: I had a lot of problems with Granatelli. We had a lot of arguments over the fact that he couldn’t
find the money he set aside for Bobby sometimes. And he did it just to be mean to me. I was P-I-S-S-E-D
off at him. Give me my goddamned money. And he just wouldn’t do it. I always had to get my attorney
to call him.

The month began without incident, Andretti and Foyt consistently ripping off the best practice laps. The
relationship between the two rivals wasn’t always the best – to say the least. They had run-ins both on
the track and off. Foyt would not comment for this story.

McGee: Mario was always talking about beating Foyt, beating Foyt, and Brawner would say, ‘Mario,
calm down, the only way you’re gonna beat Foyt is if some jealous husband shoots him dead in a bar.’
Mario didn’t always like the way Clint put things. As you can imagine. They (Andretti and Foyt) hated
each other. We went to Du Quoin (Ill.) for a dirt race; in those days, those cars were lethal. One day,
Foyt was on the pole, Mario was outside, Foyt starts yelling at him, Hey … you better watch out today;
don’t fuck with me.’ Mario said, ‘When we get in that car, I’m just as big as you are.’ They raced wheel to
wheel all day and never touched. Mario knocked Foyt off his perch; he was the king, he had USAC
(United States Auto Club) behind him and (Speedway president check) Tony Hulman and all that. He
(Foyt) didn’t like to be beaten. He always looked at Mario and said, ‘goddamned foreigner.’ I don’t get
along with Foyt, either. He’s a cheating son of a bitch.

Unser: I watched Foyt one night, we were in a bar, I think it was Terre Haute (Ind.), Mario and I were just
sitting down for some drinks. And Foyt comes over and starts slapping Mario. Now understand, he
(Andretti) weighed about 135 pounds soaking wet and Foyt knew that. He was over 200 pounds and had
the muscles and the bad temper to go with it. What can he (Andretti) do? Mario would have been stupid
if he slapped him back. That was Foyt. I wasn’t a big fan.
Qualifications were rained out, but all through practice, Andretti and Foyt played can you top this,
ripping off otherworldly speeds in an attempt to send a message to one another. Until it all went terribly
wrong – and ultimately right – during a Wednesday practice before the rescheduled qualifications when
the right rear hub of Andretti’s Lotus broke, sending Andretti hard into the wall on Turn 4.

McGee: In a way, we knew the car would never finish the race. It had all kinds of problems. It was a
complicated car. You needed an army to get that thing on the track. Coming off of (Turn) 4, the right
rear hub broke and that was it. It was a helluva crash, but I will say, the car absorbed the crash pretty
well.

Andretti: I almost killed myself, is what happened. I was lucky to get out of there alive. Everything was
crumbling before us. There was no time to repair the car, so we had to withdraw it. (The team withdrew
all three of its Lotuses, which were to be driven by Andretti, Jochen Rindt and Graham Hill, fearing the
car would not hold up under the stresses of racing in the Indianapolis 500). In those days, the thing we
worried about most was fire. The thing just went up and I jumped out as soon as I could when I felt the
heat. I burned my cheeks and my lips. I couldn’t get out of that car fast enough. When the right rear
wheel leaves a car, that’s a problem. You don’t know how much it’s gonna hurt, you just know you’re
gonna hit hard. Remember, we didn’t have the energy-absorbing walls back then that they do now. And
we didn’t have the rubber bladders in the car so there was always fuel spillage, so you have fire and
then you’re in trouble. It could have been worse. The top of the (car) body flew off and it could have
taken off my head. It was a huge body piece and somehow it missed me. But the fire got me. Fire has
always been my biggest fear because it was all too common in those days.

Davidson: When it crashed, I’m guessing he (Brawner) wasn’t terribly disappointed. He never liked that
car.

Andretti: So now I’m thinking, ‘What do we do now?’ We have another car, the Brawner Hawk, which
we only entered to get extra garage space. Now we have no idea what to do and just two days before
qualifying to get it up to speed. I just kept thinking, ‘What the hell do I have to do to finish this damned
race? Here we go again with the Lotus. Same shit again.’ But I said, ‘We got what we got, let’s put our
nose to the grindstone and make the best of it.’

The Brawner Hawk was an older car, kind of the team’s Old Faithful, and it had enjoyed ample success in
the past. In fact, Andretti won with it at Hanford, Calif., one month earlier. But more recently, in the first
USAC race of the year, in Phoenix, it lasted 38 laps before bowing out. Still, Andretti and Granatelli were
sold on the sleek, futuristic Lotus, fearful that the Hawk would not hold up. But with the Lotus out of the
picture, they had no choice.

Andretti: We knew it was a decent car, but we had a lot of issues and not a lot of time to fix them before
qualifying.

McGee: We had a lot of work to do. We had heating problems with the Hawk. We practiced with a
radiator, then took it off for qualifying. The Hawk was a good car, very reliable, and we had won races
with it. But we had never run it on a big track in this configuration. We didn’t really know how it would
perform under these conditions.
Despite the team’s concerns, Andretti qualified in the middle of the front row. Foyt was on the pole and
Unser was on the outside. It was a hopeful sign, but the Andretti team was deeply concerned that the
Hawk, which tended to run hot, would not survive the brutish 500 miles.

Unser: He (Andretti) drove the shit out of that car.

Andretti: I was pleasantly surprised at the way we qualified. I really was. To put it in the front row?
Absolutely.

The team still had several concerns, but Andretti had one in particular: He didn’t want to be in the annual
front-row picture with a face full of burns.

Davidson: He was very self-conscious, so if you look very closely at that picture, it’s not Mario, it’s (twin
brother) Aldo. Aldo was later hurt very badly and it changed his appearance quite a bit, but before his
(racing) accident, you couldn’t tell the two apart. Aldo frequently got asked for autographs.

Andretti: That next day (after qualifying), my scars got worse. I was all puffed up and looked terrible. I
didn’t want to be in the picture, so I got Aldo to sit in for me. I don’t think either A.J. or Bobby knew it
was my brother.

Unser: Oh, I knew. For sure. How could I tell the difference? One of ‘em could drive a race car and the
other one couldn’t. That’s how I knew them apart.

Meanwhile, Andretti’s team had its own issues. The Hawk had performed admirably during the
qualification laps, but to make it through 200 laps and 500 miles, it would require some kind of
modification to cool it down. So the day after qualifying, McGee and Brawner hung a radiator right
behind the cockpit and ran some laps. Originally, they were told by race stewards that the additional
radiator would be fine, but before Carb Day, they were informed that the initial ruling was mistaken and
that they could not change the configuration of the car they ran in qualifying. That did not go over well
at all.

Andretti, from his book “What’s It Like Out There’’: I went into such a tizzy that I threatened to
withdraw – a threat that I’m sure everybody took as seriously as stories about California falling into the
ocean. The ruling hit us like a bomb. We honestly believed that we would not be able to go 200 laps
without the additional radiator. Sick isn’t the proper word for the way I felt … I thought, ‘This was going
to be a great month, but it looks like all I’ll have to show for it will be a face full of blisters.’

McGee: At this point, we’ve got to figure out how to put a radiator on it without changing the car’s
configuration. Otherwise, there’s no way it’s going to last. So we took the chassis, cut the back of the
seat in the chassis and put a radiator in there you couldn’t see. Was it legal? I would think so. They
couldn’t see it, so they didn’t stop us. You can change things inside the engine for the race, but you’re
not supposed to change the look of the car. It was a lot of work. We worked right up until 2 in the
morning on race day getting it together. I went home, planned to get up at 5, and my wife couldn’t wake
me up. I ended up getting there at 7, driving through people’s backyards because the traffic had piled up
by then. Everybody was panicked because I did most of the work on the car.

May 30, 1969, was a hot day, the worst possible news for the Brawner Hawk. Early on in the race, it was
running at 270 degrees; the number should be closer to 210-220, at the most. Andretti took the lead out
of Turn 1, then settled into third place during the early part of the race as he attempted to keep the car
cool.

Andretti: I don’t know how the thing lasted. I really don’t. As the race went on, I kept thinking, ‘This
thing is gonna go,’ but it kept going and going and going. It’s crazy, but I think I might have had the best
car on the track that day. Isn’t that something? I remember every bit of race day. I took the lead right
away off of Turn 1, and I could have kept leading but I very quickly saw the temperatures go crazy and
backed off (after leading for five laps). I let Foyt and (Roger) McCluskey go by me and I followed
comfortably in third. Then we had an issue. We couldn’t get a tire off. That was Brawner’s side and he
wasn’t very proficient in the pits. Great mechanic but he probably shouldn’t have been there. We only
planned one tire change in the race, but I got in there (to the pits) and he (Brawner) was taking way too
long. In those days, it was much tougher to change a tire than it is now. He couldn’t get the right rear
tire off, so I started yelling, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ I had spent a lot of time testing the Firestone tires, so I knew
there was a lot of margin built into them. I figured if we wasted a minute or two minutes in the pits, I’m
done. In fact, I wrote a letter to Firestone thanking them for having so much margin in the tires because
we brought that thing home a winner with one set of tires.

There were some lead changes, but slowly, the leaders fell by the wayside. On Lap 79, Foyt went to the
pits with turbocharger problems and spent significant time in the pits, ruining his chance at a fourth
Indianapolis 500 win. Ruby, who had his fair share of bad luck in Indy, pitted on Lap 105, then left his pits
with the refueling hose still attached, puncturing a hole that left him with fuel spilling out of his car. He
was done for the day.

Andretti: Honestly, I had the measure of both Foyt and Ruby. Even when Lloyd was leading, I tested him
twice and I had the measure of him. You never really know, but I felt like I had him. Same with AJ, before
he dropped out, he didn’t have anything for me. When he went by me, I let him. I didn’t fight for it. At
that point, I was just trying to keep the car going, keep the temperatures down. The only problems we
had, besides the temps, were the pit stops. We came in a second time, and let me tell you, Brawner was
kind of clumsy. He shouldn’t have been out there. I’m getting going and he gets caught under the front
wing and I’m yelling, ‘Get outta here, get outta here!’ Awesome mechanic, but we should have used
somebody else. Poor Clint. I ended up hitting him, but he was alright.

Davidson: There was a lot of attrition back then. My guess is they thought, ‘We can do OK today, but
we’re not sure about winning the race. We’ll do the best we can.’ I’m guessing if they finished third,
they’d feel like, ‘Hey, we saved the day.’ But halfway through the race, Mario took the lead and then it
was just a matter of whether he could bring it home.

With most of his prime competitors out of the race or running into mechanical problems that forced
prolonged pit stops, Andretti led the last 116 laps of the race. It was not one of the more epic races in
Indy 500 history. Andretti cruised while he and his crew silently prayed the Brawner Hawk would survive
until the end.

Granatelli: Memories of the race? None, really. It wasn’t a terribly exciting race. There wasn’t any side
by side racing that I can recall. Once Mario got the lead by a large margin (ahead of Dan Gurney), he just
cruised to the end.
Andretti: All I wanted to do is bring it home, bring it home. And then it gets surreal as you get closer.
And then you get the white flag and it’s like, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Those last couple of laps, you’re
trying to concentrate and bring it home, but sometimes your mind wanders when you have a big lead.
So I’m driving and I can smell the steaks grilling on the infield and I start thinking, ‘I could really go for a
steak for dinner.’ Next thing I know, I’m almost up into the wall. That caught my attention really quick. I
didn’t think about steaks after that. Then you’re thinking, ‘One more lap! One more lap!’ And you cross
the finish line and it’s the best feeling ever because it’s such a big relief because you want it so bad, and
if you don’t win it, you’ve got to wait another whole year. It just means so much, holds so much value. It
changes your life and your career for the better. It just opens up opportunities you’ve never had before.
You’re cemented forever. No other race on the planet can give you that. It’s the defining moment of a
career, an after that, you’re more relaxed because you won Indy.

On the ABC telecast, cameras turned to Andy Granatelli, who looked like he’d seen a ghost. After all the
bad luck he’d experienced in Indianapolis, he felt like he’d been jinxed, so when Andretti was leading
comfortably, even getting the white flag with Gurney far behind, Granatelli looked like he’d just ingested
some bad shrimp scampi. He couldn’t wrap his head around the notion that his team was about to win
the Indianapolis 500.

Granatelli: My father should have won a number of times in Indy. He had great cars, great drivers, but
something always happened. He’d had so much heartbreak with the turbines (in 1967 and ’68) before
they basically outlawed the turbines for ’69. Back then, you could build a lot of different specifications. I
never would have thought IndyCar would become a cookie-cutter series the way it is now. Before, you
could build any kind of car you wanted. He had been so frustrated so many times. I’m not sure he really
believed (he’d won) until Mario drove into victory lane.

Andretti: Knowing how much it meant to Andy, close but no cigar so many times, and to bring him the
win, that gave me tremendous satisfaction. Andy didn’t care about anything else. He didn’t care about
the series, only here, only Indy. For me, it was different. Indy was the place you wanted to win above all
others, but I had another race the following week. For him, this was everything. This was his lifelong
dream.

Then it happened: The iconic Granatelli kiss, the team owner sidling over to Andretti while he was sitting
in his car in victory lane and planting a big smooch on his right cheek.

Granatelli: That was my dad. Italian. Very emotional guy. People don’t know, he’d done that many times
before when he’d won races with other drivers. Mario wasn’t the first.

Andretti: Typical Andy reaction. I was all slobbered up with all the junk from the track on my face and he
gives me this big kiss; I’m sure he got some of that stuff on his face, too. Oh, it was great. You just don’t
expect you’ll be getting a kiss from anybody except the beauty queen. But he smelled like garlic. I guess
he forgot about the burns on my face, but honestly, it didn’t hurt. But it was kind of a sloppy kiss, you
know?

Davidson: It’s surely an iconic moment in Indianapolis 500 history. Maybe the most iconic picture from
any race. You think of the ’69 race, and that’s what comes to mind. It was such a great story.

Andretti: You think about it, all the times I’ve been here with great cars, leading all those laps, all the
times when we thought we were going to win, and to win that day with a backup car? Even until the
end, I thought something bad was going to happen, but it never did. But she (the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway) decides who’s going to win. That was just my day, you know? I had to pinch myself. It was
beyond belief. I’m telling you, it’s the best feeling. If you risk life to achieve what you want to achieve,
that’s the best feeling. It’s a feeling I wish every driver who ever put his hand on a steering wheel could
experience.

As it turned out, Andretti was right about the state of the car; it might not have made it another mile.

McGee: We lucked out. We got the car back to the garage and when we took the back cover off the rear
end, two of the teeth (from the gear) had fallen off and one tooth was driving the car. It probably
wouldn’t have gone another five laps, tops. The oil was low, too, but I think there was enough left to
keep going for a while.

Unser: I was his (garage) neighbor and I saw his car when he finished the race. It couldn’t have gone
another five laps, maybe not even. McGee took the rear end apart, I looked at that and I shook my head.
The man drove the car until it had nothing left to talk about. But the good Lord said, ‘You’re gonna finish
and you’re gonna win it.’ Everything was against him that day and yet, he wins the danged thing. You
talk about bad luck in other races he’s had here, that day, he was lucky. Good car, but everything broke
right for him. The right circumstances. Sometimes, it’s your day, right?

At that point, it was viewed as a virtual certainty that Andretti, one of the sport’s greatest drivers, the
only man who would go on to win the Indy 500, Daytona 500 and the Formula One title, would go on to
win several more Indianapolis 500’s. But something crazy always happened, giving rise to the belief that
there was an Andretti Curse. In 1985, he led the most laps (107), then was victimized by eventual winner
Danny Sullivan’s famous “spin and win.’’ In 1987, he led the most laps (170) and was well on his way to a
dominant win when then-track announcer Tom Carnegie intoned on Lap 177, “Mario is slowing down.’’
Electrical problems got him. It was always something – along, of course, with the controversial 1981
race, where both Andretti and Unser wear rings signifying victory that year.

Davidson: It’s astonishing to me that he never won here again. Astonishing.

Unser: You know, it doesn’t surprise me he never won here again. The way I look at it with Mario is, he
drove the car too hard. He got a quarter out of a nickel, but he ran so damn hard, he broke everything
he ran here and I really believe that. And I think if you gave him truth serum, he’d say the same thing.

Andretti: I think about all the times I should have won here. And then to win in ’69 when everything
went wrong, with a backup car, with the thing running so hot, with all this happening, sometimes, it’s
just your day, right?